


Odd Jobs

by DameRuth



Series: Bliss [18]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Cultural Differences, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:35:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24543175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DameRuth/pseuds/DameRuth
Summary: Jack tells Rose a little about his past to help pass the time, and ends up revealing more than he realizes. In the Bliss!verse, though a little on the angst-ier side this time.[Continuing the Teaspoon imports, originally posted 2007.10.25.]
Relationships: Ninth Doctor/Jack Harkness/Rose Tyler
Series: Bliss [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/14078
Kudos: 26





	Odd Jobs

**Author's Note:**

> I was sketching out some notebook material, including how I intended to interpret Jack's comments about past pregnancies . . . and somehow notes turned into a scene; since I couldn't figure a place to slot it into a larger story, I ended up writing it as a standalone.

“How’re you doing?” Jack asked, poking his head around the corner of a bookshelf.  
  
Rose looked up from her book and gave him a wan smile.  
  
“I think the painkillers’re starting to help,” she told him, laying her book facedown on her knee to mark her place.  
  
The dark, cozy comfort of the Library had seemed like a good place to hole up and be distracted for a while. The TARDIS had even “recommended” a book, practically dropping it on the floor in front of Rose. It turned out to be a slim volume of 37th century poems —- which, Rose had to admit, were very pretty. She just wasn’t in a good mood to concentrate.  
  
Encouraged by her response, the rest of Jack’s body followed his head around the corner, and he plopped down onto the green sofa next to Rose. Obligingly, it expanded to make room for him.  
  
Shapeshifting furniture — yet another pleasantly daft feature of TARDIS life that Rose enjoyed, even if it could be disconcerting.  
  
Jack gestured invitingly, and Rose scooted over so she could snuggle against his warm, familiar side. He slipped his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close, radiating companionable sympathy.  
  
“Sorry,” she said, “I’ll be better in a bit.”  
  
Back home on Earth, she’d never had much trouble with her monthly cycle, but the temporal disorientation and frequent running-for-one’s-life stress of TARDIS life had sent Rose’s system into consternation. She’d found herself getting the occasional bout of irregularity and sharp cramping; it usually passed quickly enough, but it could be very unpleasant for a short while.  
  
At first, she’d been too embarrassed to say anything to the Doctor, or, later, Jack, and had sought out painkillers in secret. With the solidification of their empathic link, and the attendant physical intimacy accompanying it, however, that secrecy had fallen by the wayside.  
  
To Rose’s deep relief (since, in her experience, blokes weren’t exactly easy around matters of a female nature), neither Jack nor the Doctor had found anything embarrassing, off-putting or annoying about her body’s patterns -- they simply treated such things as biological matters-of-course.  
  
In fact, they could even be sympathetic.  
  
Rose relaxed into Jack’s embrace with a happy sigh. Even the current knotting of her insides couldn’t mute her pleasure at his touch.  
  
“Mmmmm,” he rumbled happily, planting a kiss on the crown of her head. “We should do this more often. This couch is pretty comfy . . .”  
  
Rose rubbed her cheek against his chest and sent him a pulse of soft golden agreement through the link . . . followed by an unintentional stab of ugly black-red as deep muscles knotted up again.  
  
“Sorry,” she whispered again, against the soft cotton of Jack’s white t-shirt. She closed her eyes and tucked her head more firmly against his chest, embarrassed. She should have known better than to open the link like that, at a time when she might risk passing along physical pain.  
  
“Hey, don’t be,” Jack said, giving her shoulders another squeeze. “Cramps are no fun. That was the thing I always hated most about getting pregnant.”  
  
Rose’s eyes blinked open, and she suddenly forgot all about her cramps in the process of trying to parse out that statement.  
  
“Pregnant?” she said, a little more loudly than she’d intended.  
  
Jack didn’t seem to notice anything odd about her tone. He rambled on, conversationally.  
  
“Yeah. The first few days after they put in a new hormonal implant would have me cramping up something fierce,” he said. “Almost made healing up after the c-section seem easy.”  
  
Rose pushed against the weight of Jack’s arm, and he raised it so she could sit up. Frowning, she studied his face, trying to see if he was joking. “You’re tellin’ me you’ve been _pregnant_?” she asked, confusion making her voice sharp.  
  
Jack cocked his head at her, looking dead serious, and a little confused himself. Then he relaxed, dropping his arm around her shoulders again and resting his head back against the sofa. He smiled slightly.  
  
“Guess I never mentioned that,” he said. “Back when I was younger, I used to hire out for early gestations.”  
  
“You mean, you were like a, a surrogate mother?” Rose asked, trying to figure out what “early gestation” meant in relation to her Jack.  
  
“Well, not really — but kinda’.”  
  
“But . . .” Rose sputtered, “ _how_?!?”  
  
“Body-mod, of course,” Jack told her, as if it was obvious. He chuckled. “I keep forgetting you grew up in the twenty-first century.” The way he said it made it sound like _"the Dark Ages."_  
  
“Gestations are a good way to make money, if you pass the qualifications,” he continued, easily. “You have to be at least fifteen Standard years old, at least ninety-six percent genetically human, and you have to be willing to do a body mod — the medical agency pays for _that_ , at least.”  
  
His tone went reminiscent. “I was old enough, I passed the genetic test — barely — and it was a better gig than a lot of ‘em. At least they had a vested interest in keeping you fed and housed while you had a bun in the oven . . .”  
  
Rose’s brain felt like it was in some sort of painful, gear-grinding overdrive as she automatically damped down her emotional reaction to his words. Among other things, she was pretty sure Jack had just told her he wasn’t completely human — not by twenty-first century standards, anyway — and she was piecing together a rather appalling picture of his early life and circumstances.  
  
“You hired yourself out — your body?” she whispered, resting her head back on his chest.  
  
He shrugged, the muscles of his chest and shoulder bunching under her cheek.  
  
“It was what I had. Pretty common, on the fringe worlds. Rich folks from the Central Colonies are always looking for warm bodies to gestate their kids. It’s supposed to be better, developmentally, for the fetus to be in a human body the first trimester, rather than in a mechanical incubator. So, they go where it’s poor, and find _lots_ of volunteers.”  
  
All Rose could manage to say was, “But _how_?” again. So far as she knew, Jack didn’t have anywhere to _put_ a baby — and she’d been over his body pretty thoroughly.  
  
Jack, relaxed and chatty, filled her in, obviously glad to have found a distraction for her.  
  
“Well, they surgically insert a synthetic uterus for starters. When you’ve healed up from that, they put a time-release hormonal implant into your upper arm and once that’s worked its magic — and given you one hell of a case of cramps in the process — they use a long needle to implant the zygote in the uterus, through the abdominal wall.  
  
“That part sounds worse than it is, by the way. The needle’s pretty damn scary, but they’re good with their anesthetics.  
  
“Anyway, everything cooks along for three Standard months, then they bring you back in, take the fetus out with a c-section, put it in an incubator, stitch you up, and when that’s healed, you’re ready for the next round.”  
  
Rose “listened” to Jack’s emotions closely as he spoke, and for him, it was like he was describing a job sweeping floors. No emotional context to it, at all.  
  
“Just like that,” she murmured.  
  
“Yep. But lots of perks — you get a monthly stipend, and they provide housing, food, regular medical checkups . . . it’s a good deal. I used my money to study — thought I might get a degree, see if that took me offworld.”  
  
His emotional “tone” darkened suddenly. “Then I got the bright idea of joining the military. Seemed like a faster ticket away from the Boeshane. Guess it was, at that.”  
  
His voice was still light, but he stopped talking, abruptly, and all his earlier ease vanished. Even the muscle tone under Rose’s cheek tensed.  
  
She reached out and rubbed a hand over the flat, firm surface of his belly. “I can’t imagine you pregnant,” she said, partly to distract him from whatever dark memories he’d inadvertently dredged up, but mostly because it was true. “Flexibility” aside, Jack was probably the most _male_ person she’d ever known.  
  
Jack chuckled, good humor restored, and gently picked up her hand, positioning it on the front of his jeans just below his belt buckle. He covered her hand with his and pressed it to his lower abdomen affectionately.  
  
“More in that area,” he said, by way of correction. “Still got it, in fact — the uterus, I mean. Never had it removed. Seemed more trouble than it’d be worth.”  
  
Rose blinked, and decided instantly that _that_ was one thing Jackie Tyler never needed to know about her future son-in-law.  
  
Then she considered the information she’d just been given.  
  
From little hints dropped here and there, she’d become fairly certain that Jack had used his body to generate income in the past, and she’d made herself accept it. What she hadn’t realized was the _degree_ to which he’d sold himself.  
  
She couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to view one’s flesh, one’s _self_ , as a money-making commodity, to be sold readily and repeatedly so long as the price was right. But it explained a lot of things about Jack.  
  
He was bold and experienced when it came to sex . . . but almost painfully shy at times about real intimacy, or sex-as-lovemaking. She’d seen that from the first night the three of them were together. There were deep, deep scars in him, and while she and the Doctor did their best to help, she knew it would take a long time to ease all the sore and broken spots inside the third member of their crew.  
  
She could remember, vividly, a recent example — Jack, caught at the edge of a powerful bomb explosion while they were working to head off a violent political coup. He’d only been stunned by the blast’s concussion . . . but flying debris had slashed him badly, across the neck and face.  
  
Rose and the Doctor, finding him a few minutes later, had been wildly relieved that Jack’s eyes and major arteries were spared, but when Jack regained consciousness and realized he’d received several severe facial wounds, he responded with unexpected intensity.  
  
For a few moments he’d radiated . . . terror, pure and simple. Not wounded vanity, or a fearful reaction to the injury itself; it was the thought that he might be visibly damaged — scarred, no longer beautiful — that had him nearly frantic. It was like a professional athlete fearing loss of a leg, or a laborer facing an amputated hand. That was the first time she’d understood Jack correlated his physical appearance with _survival_.  
  
And, just barely, deep, deep down, she’d caught a faint whiff of his worst and most terrible fear of all — that somehow, if he were physically damaged, it would be enough to break the link between the three of them, and leave him alone again . . .  
  
Rose, looking back on it, squeezed her eyes shut and hugged Jack, hard, remembering how appalled she’d been that he could even _think_ such a thing. They’d seen each others’ hearts laid bare when they’d finally accepted the link that bound them, but Jack was still afraid.  
  
The Doctor had been equally shaken, she knew — she’d seen it in the constant stream of reassurances (often covered in sarcasm, but sincere nonetheless) he’d given their injured companion, and the grim concentration with which he’d plied the tissue regenerator and other medical tools in the TARDIS sickbay.  
  
When he was done, there were no signs left of Jack’s physical injuries — not the faintest pucker, ridge or scar.  
  
Jack’s unspoken relief had been profound, almost to the point of tears.  
  
Poor Jack — somewhere along the way, he’d come to the conclusion that his body was the _only_ part of himself that had any value and relevance. Rose wanted to cry for him, and for every time he’d sold himself and lost a little bit of his soul in the process.  
  
Jack’s hand stroked the top of her head, feather-light.  
  
“Hey,” he said softly. “What’s the matter? You’ve gone all quiet . . .”  
  
He didn’t mean just verbally — she’d clamped down ruthlessly on her end of the link, hiding her feelings as best she could.  
  
Gently, but with considerable strength, he eased her arms from around him, and turned her chin so he could see her face.  
  
Rose did her best to keep her features blank, but she was hopeless at that sort of thing, and knew it. She wore her heart on her sleeve and always had, not like Jack and the Doctor.  
  
Jack’s intensely blue eyes searched her face, and his brows drew together in a concerned frown. “Rose, honey, what’s _wrong_? Was it something I said . . .?”  
  
His confusion was real and unfeigned, and Rose was aware of the gaping chasm in understanding that lay between the two of them.  
  
He might look and sound like a human from her time — but he wasn’t. The day after Jack had joined the TARDIS crew, the Doctor had pulled Rose aside for a talking-to, and done his best to drive that point home to her.  
  
“Think of him almost as an alien,” the Doctor had told her, earnestly. “Someone from another culture, at least. You’re gonna expect him to be like someone from the twenty-first century, but he’s from the fifty-first century, an’ you can’t forget it.”  
  
At the time, she’d thought the Doctor was exaggerating, but he hadn’t been. Not even slightly. She knew there was nothing she could say right now that Jack would understand, so she stayed silent, gazing up into his eyes.  
  
 _How can you help someone heal,_ she thought, desperately, _when they don’t even know they’ve been hurt?_  
  
Jack was looking thoroughly alarmed by now, so Rose summoned as much inner strength as she could and managed a shaky smile.  
  
“Sorry,” she said for the third time that day. “S’ nothing, really. I just . . .” she took a deep breath, and almost without realizing what her next words would be, she told him, “I love you.”  
  
The silence that followed was profound, as if even the TARDIS was stunned.  
  
It wasn’t anything Rose hadn’t told Jack already, with thought and touch, but she’d never said it out loud before. She’d found she wasn’t good at putting strong emotions into words. The Doctor was the same — it was something she and the Time Lord instinctively understood about each other. Neither of them felt any particular need to speak, or hear, certain things aloud.  
  
Jack, though . . . Jack held his peace, but not necessarily for the same reasons.  
  
Now, he stared at Rose, stunned; her declaration had obviously blindsided him.  
  
She opened the link from her end, letting him feel the absolute sincerity in her. She managed a steadier, wider smile, and reached up to brush a few wisps of dark hair from where they’d fallen over his forehead. He was getting due for a trim, unless he intended to follow the Doctor’s example.  
  
No longer shielding, she could sense Jack’s emotions more clearly, and “heard’ the deep twinge of feeling that ran through him as he absorbed — and believed — what he’d just heard. He couldn’t for the life of him understand _why_ she’d said it, but it affected him deeply that she had.  
  
“Oh, Rose,” he said, his voice shaking, “I love you, too.” He swept her into a tight hug, and held her close, face buried in her hair. Rose wrapped her arms around him in turn, and hugged back for all she was worth.  
  
It seemed like next to nothing, given all he’d been through in his life, but it was what she could do.  
  
After a moment, he sniffed, next to her ear, and then exhaled, steadying himself.  
  
“Anyway,” he said, releasing his hold and pulling back a little, “when you’re feeling up to it, Himself has a planet he wants to show us . . .”  
  
His voice was a little rough, but he’d recovered most of his usual composure. There was a twinkle of genuine amusement in his eyes, brightened by a wash of extra moisture.  
  
“Oh?” she asked, slipping back into a semblance of her usual bantering mode. “What’s special about this one?”  
  
“Well,” Jack replied, his voice completely back to normal, “he _says_ water runs uphill there . . .” He shifted and relaxed against the back of the sofa, though he left one arm around Rose’s shoulders.  
  
“Really?” she asked, dubiously, raising an eyebrow.  
  
“That’s what he _says_ ,” Jack qualified firmly. “Either there’s some corner of the Universe where the Second Law of Thermodynamics doesn’t apply, or else there’s a trick to it that he’s just dying to explain to us.”  
  
Rose burst into genuine laugher. “I’m betting on the second,” she said.  
  
“Yeah, me too,” Jack told her, with his trademark crooked grin. “How’re you feeling?”  
  
Rose, who hadn’t been paying attention to her own condition for several minutes, stopped and considered. Then she caught her tongue between her teeth and grinned.  
  
“The painkillers have kicked in,” she said. “I’m feelin’ fine, now.”  
  
“Well, then — let’s not keep the Doc waiting,” he told her, and stood, offering her his hand. “You know how antsy he gets when he has a good lecture worked up.”  
  
Rose took his hand . . . and then slipped her arm around his waist. Jack’s arm went across her shoulders, and together they left the Library, headed for parts unknown.  


* * *

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.  
  
This story archived at <http://www.whofic.com/viewstory.php?sid=16391>


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